Construction
archaeological remains, Antibes, France
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
The Stone of Terpon or Pebble of Antibes (Galet d'Antibes) is an ancient artifact excavated near the seawall of Antibes, France (the ancient Antipolis) in 1866. The stone is held in the Musée d’Histoire et d’Archéologie adjacent to that same seawall in Antibes. The stone's inscription has been dated to between 450 and 425 BC, and the object may once have marked the entrance to a brothel.
The inscription was dedicated by Terpon, servant of Aphrodite.
The stone is formed in a phallic shape (23" long, 8" thick, 73 lbs.), with a carved inscription in Ionic Greek reading:
In standard Greek orthography the text would read:
It forms a distich in dactylic hexameter:
The inscription can be roughly translated as: "I am Terpon, servant of noble Aphrodite, may Kypris return grace to those who set up (the stone)."
Text from the Wikipedia article “Stone of Terpon”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.